Challenges facing the foreign service - Ronald L. Spiers' address at the State Department's 22nd annual Foreign Service Day on May 1, 1987 - transcript

US Department of State Bulletin, July, 1987

Personnel Issues and the 1980 Foreign Service Act

Let me deal more briefly with our personnel situation. As you know, the 1980 Foreign Service Act put into place systems designed to produce a predictable flowthrough and to ensure that only the best officers advance to the top. The others--although by any objective standards very good officers--drop by the wayside in this extremely competitive milieu. Our entry system continues to be one of the most selective in the world. While more than 17,000 applicants take the annual Foreign Service written examination, we appoint only some 200 new officers each year. But even after joining the Foreign Service, being simply a "very good officer' may not be good enough. This highly competitive system and its byproducts are, today, among the most controversial management issues in the Department of State.

This year, we will lose 49 of our FO-1s due to the 6-year window. They will join 53 others who will have to leave because they have reached time-in-class limits without being promoted into the Senior Foreign Service. In addition, more than 130 of our Senior Foreign Service officers have retired after they were not offered the limited career extensions set up under the 1980 act. This loss of Senior Foreign Service officers has, however, been relatively less noticed since it has occurred over a longer period of time--i.e., since 1984.

We have faced a great deal of pressure to extend the 6-year window during which promotion opportunities to the Senior Foreign Service remain open. (This 6-year period was set after consultation with AFSA [American Foreign Service Association] by Secretary Haig in fulfillment of the 1980 act.) We have resisted extending the window since, as I have reported to you in previous years, we cannot simply postpone facing difficult management decisions. We must take the necessary steps now to set the Service on a clear and predictable course.

A colleague recently put the issue we face better than I could, and I quote him here:

A competitive system which retained its less competitive members would be wasteful. A system which did not provide for advance of junior officers would be wasteful. A system which did not continuously reoxygenate would be wasteful. A rigorous up-or-out philosophy is a practical and workable means of balancing the needs for experience, progression and employee development; and the practices applied by Management seem to achieve the desired ends of that philosophy.

In short, we cannot both retain all senior officers and FO-1s and still preserve opportunities for the most gifted of the next generation to move up. The trick is to find the right balance between these two legitimate concerns.

Confronting Security Challenges

I have saved my comments on security until last. For the last month, the story of the Moscow Marines and the bugging of our new office building in Moscow have occupied headlines around the world. From parts of the Hill and the media, critics variously charge incompetence on the part of the Department or, in the words of one TV journalist, "criminal negligence' on the part of our Ambassador in Moscow. The Department, according to some critics, has ignored warnings and was naive about the Soviets, sloppy in its procedures, and indifferent about security. Behind much of this assault lies ignorance of facts or, perhaps, hidden agendas.